Posted on Feb 23, 2024 7:01 AMRoselle is a favorite summer bloomer and St. Kitts has been my chosen cultivar.
This past summer I decided to plant a full raised bed of them in hopes of harvesting enough seed pods to experiment with tea, jam or jelly.
As the seed pods formed, I would freeze them and ended up with almost two quarts of seed pods.
With the end of year bookkeeping and tax paperwork completed, this past weekend was the time to get them out of the freezer and into jars.
The seed pods were separated from the leafy part of the calyces.
The seed pods were pierced before cooking to extract the fluid which contains pectin.
Using the Instant Pot, I cooked the external part of the calyx for five minutes, then mashed them easily to pulp.
Then the seed pods were cooked separately. The juice was added to the pulp and was cooked till thickening.
Roselle has a tart cranberry taste. Sampling while cooking, I continued to add sugar in 1/4 cup increments till the tartness was still there but the bite was gone. For this batch, I used 1 1/4 cups of cane sugar.
It filled 9 half pint jars. Ta da... Roselle jam.
